Conceding, then, as fully as Mr. Carter can demand, that the “ somewhat,” which our Great High Priest had to offer, i.e., to bring near to God, was His own blood, i.e., Himself, or His own life, or soul,* we yet maintain, in direct opposition to Mr. Carter's repeated assertions of the continuity or renewal of the offering of Calvary, that (1) the type, even in its minute details, which prefigured that offering ; (2) the very act, i.e., the blood-shedding upon the cross, by which the sacrificial type was fulfilled; (3) the rending of the vail once for all, at the very time when the passage into the Holiest was opened; (4) the appearance in Heaven once, and once for all, when the last of the types of the Levitical law was accomplished; and lastly, the very terms in which the unity as well as the necessity of the offering is expressed in the very passage in question ;t-all conspire to impart force and energy to the emphatic declaration of the inspired Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the entrance of Christ into heaven was, “not that he should offer Himself often, as the High Priest entered into the holy place every year with the blood of others; for then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world; but now once, (i.e. once for all,) in the end of the world, (i.e. of the dispensation,) hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." I

It is strange, indeed, that, though expressly treating, throughout the whole of this correspondence, upon the perpetual priesthood of Christ, Mr. Carter's arguments should be based almost exclusively upon the supposition that the priesthood sustained by our Blessed Lord in heaven is a priesthood after the order of Aaron, and not after the order of Melchisedek.

And yet the importance of this type of Christ's everlasting priesthood has not been altogether overlooked by Mr. Carter. On the contrary, he justly observes, with regard to it, that “it is most material to note that St. Paul declares the priesthood of Melchisedek to be the true type of that of our Lord, and it has an essential bearing on our present enquiry.” (p.37.) And yet further, Mr. Carter not only admits, as an indisputable truth, that our Lord's unchanging priesthood is after the type of that of Melchisedek, but he proceeds to describe that priesthood, or "offering,” as one in which “there was no death, no suffering.”

So far, however, from perceiving the inconsistency between the type and its alleged fulfilment,-i. e., between a priesthood unconnected with suffering and with death, and a priesthood, the very essence of which, according to the theory of the Declarants, consists in its being a perpetual renewing or prolongation of an offering for sin, -Mr. Carter proceeds to draw from his premisses a conclusion, so remarkable in itself, and so strangely inconsistent with the data upon which it professedly rests, that we might well incur the charge of misrepresentation, were we to describe it in any other language than his own. His words are as follows:-"And our Lord is a 'Priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedek ;' 'He has an unchangeable Priesthood.' His must, therefore, be an offering, a sacrifice (sic), separate from the ideas of suffering and death. And what offering can this be but His own Person ?” (pp. 37, 38.)

Had it been Mr. Carter's object, as it confessedly is that of Mr. Marriott, to bring the theory of the Declarants into direct contrast with the dogmatical statements of Holy Scripture, he could hardly, in our judgment, have adopted a more successful course than that which he has here pursued.

Not content with the primâ facie inconsistency of the terminology employed by the Declarants with that of Holy Scripture, an inconsistency very fully, and, in our judgment, unanswerably established by Mr. Marriott, Mr. Carter has here made that inconsistency yet more apparent, first, by asserting, in strict harmony with Holy Scripture, that the perpetual priesthood of Christ is a priesthood, not after the order of that of Aaron, but of that of Melchisedek, a priesthood, therefore, from which the very ideas of suffering and of death are alike alien, (and, as he might have added, in which no mention is made of offering); and then, by asserting, as an essential consequence arising out of these premisses, that the offering ever made ander such a Priesthood must, of necessity, be that of " His own Person” (p. 38), i.e., as he elsewhere explains the same terms, “ the offering of His own blood," as inseparable from Himself. (p. 14.)*

One mournful reflection forces itself upon our minds, as we bring to a close the remarks which have suggested themselves

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to us in the course of our perusal of this correspondence,-a reflection doubly mournful in times like the present, when the assaults made upon the faith from many and different quarters so loudly call for agreement, on the part of all the true followers of Christ, in the recognition of the paramount authority of the written Word. Our reflection is this: that any theory, the exi. gencies of which can reconcile a mind such as that of Mr. Carter to those manifest contradictions, alike of the letter and spirit of Holy Scripture, which characterize the Declaration and its defence, bids fair to undermine the very foundations of the faith, and to open wide the flood-gates of Romanism and unbelief. We select but two instances of these contradictions: (1.) Where. as our blessed Lord declared upon the Cross respecting His own work that it was “finished,” Mr. Carter asserts that we must await the end of the mediatorial kingdom before it can be affirmed of our Lord, “as the Offerer of Sacrifice,” and “as the propitiatory victim, that He has finished His work.” (p. 35.) (2.) Whereas the inspired writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews asserts, both directly and indirectly, with regard to our Lord's oblation of Himself, the inseparable connexion between “offering” and “suffering;" and further declares, that that oblation having been once, and once for all, made, there is now“no more" or “no longer (oʻkéTi) any “offering for sin ;' Mr. Carter, in common with the other Declarants, not only asserts his belief that “Christ, our Great High Priest, ever offers Himself before the Eternal Father" (p. 3); but adds, as a truth which does not admit of question, that the heavenly vision actually seen and described by St. John was that of “Christ as a Priest offering Himself before God the Father.” (p.36.)

“THE NEW PHILOSOPHY." We move in cycles. “That which hath been is now : and that which is to be hath already been ;” and there is nothing new under the sun. The principle on which John Henry Newman based his elaborate apology, for the varieties and excesses of Popish development, has received its most recent illustration in that fresh phase of heathen materialism which Mr. Huxley has exhibited in the last number of the Fortnightly Review. "Old principles reappear under new forms; it (the philosophy or sect, whatever it be] changes with them in order to remain the same.”* The old endeavour, to find a fulcrum for the lever which is to subvert the very foundations of Christianity, is perpetually renewed.. Nothing, therefore, can be more natural than that the failure of Renan and Colenso, to resuscitate Strauss and Voltaire, should be followed by this attempt of our distinguished physiologist to revive the defunct doctrines of David Hume,-"one of the greatest men Scotland has ever produced,” “the most acute thinker of the eighteenth century-even though that century produced Kant.”+

In propounding his views, Mr. Huxley says: “Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that when the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if gross and brutal materialism' were the mildest phrase applied to them in certain quarters. And most undoubtedly the terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two things are certain : the one, that I hold the statements to be substantially true; the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism to involve grave philosophical error.”

Now, for our own part, while it costs us no self-denial to refrain from the use of disparaging epithets, we confess our inability to perceive the injustice of that condemnation of these views which their propounder anticipates, not only from “many zealous persons,” but also from “some few of the wise and thoughtful.” To us, his attempted distinction between the materialism which he rejects, and the materialistic terminology which he so stoutly defends, is at once illogical and unintel. ligible. Illogical, so far as we understand it; and unintelligible where (without supposing its author capable of stultifying

* “ Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, by J. H. Newman.” (p. 38.) + Prof. Hazley, in the Fortnightly Review, Feb. 1869. (p. 142.) Vol. 68.-No. 375.

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himself) it cannot, with either clearness or certainty, be understood. That we may not prejudge the question, however, Mr. Huxley shall speak for himself.

He commences with an explanation of the title prefixed to his paper, “On the Physical Basis of Life.”

" In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I have translated the term 'Protoplasm,' which is the scientific name of the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words, the physical basis of life.' I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novelso widely spread is the conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it, and even those who are aware that matter and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared for the conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase, the physical basis or matter of life,' that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense.” (p. 129.)

This paragraph is noteworthy, not merely, nor even chiefly, for the admission contained in the closing sentence, but rather for its disavowal of the wide-spread “conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it.” To overthrow this conception, and to replace it by the “novel” idea that there is no such thing as a vitality,” properly so called; that there is in very deed no such thing as * life," but merely a “physical basis or matter of life;" and that all the highest phenomena of what we have been accustomed to regard as life-thought, speech, consciousness, the creations of genius or of enterprise-are due simply and solely to “molecular changes in that matter of life;" this is the magnum opus to accomplish which Mr. Huxley has now put forth all his power.

Proceeding to anticipate objections, he asks,

“What truly can seem to be more obviously different from one another in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living beings ? What community of faculty can there be between the brightly coloured lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge ? .... If we regard substance, or material composition, what hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair, and the blood which courses through her youthful veins? or what is there in common between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the band which raises them out of their element ?